Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Gallaudet University plans to cut Computer Science

Read this, and tell me if anything looks unusual to you:
Be it resolved that the Board of Trustees, recognizing the need to strategically reallocate resources, approves the recommendation of the university administration to close the following major degree programs:

• Ed.S. Change Leadership in Education
• M.S. Administration
• Ph.D. Special Education Administration
• M.A. Deaf Studies: Deaf History
• M.S. Leisure Services Administration
• B.S. Computer Information Systems
• B.A. Chemistry: Chemical Technology
• B.A./B.S. Computer Science
• B.A. French
• B.A. International Government
• B.A. Theatre Arts: Educational Drama
Two of these things are not like the others. I've made them red. (Not because I'm angry, I just like the color.)

I can understanding cutting French and Leisure Services Administration - I doubt there are a lot of jobs in these fields.  Same also for International Government and Theater Arts, though I suspect both of those fields could stand to have a higher representation of people who are deaf and hard-of-hearing. I don't know anything about the fields of Education, Administration, or Deaf Studies so I can't comment on those. As for the Chemical Technology major, given its stated purpose is to prepare students to be laboratory technicians and given the rumors of large numbers of people with Chemistry PhDs scrambling to get lab tech jobs, I'm not entirely surprised to see the major cut.

But CS and CIS? Why?

Why on earth would a university cut CS programs in this economy? If anything, those are the majors most likely to yield jobs for undergraduates. An undergraduate degree in Computer Science is a golden ticket for a job from now until 2018. Here's what the Computing Community Consortium has to say about this (boldface and italics are theirs):
Looking at all science and engineering occupations — “Computer and mathematical,” “Architecture and engineering,” and “Life, physical, and social science” — computer science occupations are projected to be responsible for nearly 60% of all job growth between now and 2018. The next largest contributor — all fields of Engineering combined — is projected to contribute 13.4% of total growth. All of the life sciences combined: 5.6%. All of the physical sciences combined: 3.1%. In other words, among all occupations in all fields of science and engineering, computer science occupations are projected to account for nearly 60% of all job growth between now and 2018.
So, I am puzzled by Gallaudet's decision. And troubled.

14 comments:

  1. Gallaudet is a small school with an unusual student body (deaf students). They may have trouble providing faculty for the program or it may just be that there is a lack of majors.

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  2. I honestly wonder if there are other majors that do a better job than CS at preparing students for "computer science occupations". A lot of physics and math majors take CS/software engineering jobs, for instance. It would be interesting to look at hiring patterns by degree for entry-level CS positions.

    What is the purpose of a Bachelor's degree? Is it to prepare students for a job in a specific field? Or is it to give them the tools they need to be able to prepare *themselves* for jobs in a variety of fields? Many CS educators seem to think the former. I think the latter, and that's why math and physics majors can do CS jobs---those majors teach them thinking skills that apply directly to CS. What I'd really like to know is whether math and physics majors can do CS jobs better than CS majors on average.

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  3. I would have thought Gallaudet less likley to cut CS from what I know of deaf culture (wrt we can do anything hearing people do). Though I don't know what their student major profile is.

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  4. I am friends with several deaf and hard-of-hearing computer scientists, so I don't think that's the issue. Most likely it is a lack of majors (which has plagued CS programs across the world).

    But my answer to lack of majors is - try to boost enrollment. Have outreach days. Jazz up the introductory programming classes so the students are developing games instead of calculating Fibonacci sequences. etc.

    I mean, you cut French because being a fluent French speaker is not going to help their graduates land jobs. But being a Computer Scientist *is*.

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  5. Anon: Personally I don't think it matters much one way or the other what degree someone gets specifically (I know plenty of people who majored in English who are outstanding computer scientists and engineers). Math and Physics are fine so long as the students are being taught the right skill sets. (i.e., if it's 100% theory and they've never touched a computer before, they're going to be lousy software engineers).

    My concern is that when I hear about a university cutting Computer Science, it's sending a message to me that we (academic scientists who work in Computing) are not doing a good job at conveying what we teach and what a degree in Computer Science means.

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  6. I'd only wonder if they don't have other computer science majors in some other discipline. As in where I'm at there is a separate computer science major compared to a computer engineering major (which is more like a combo of software and computer science). If they're eliminating one but keeping the other that would make sense to me, otherwise this is troubling.

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  7. But my answer to lack of majors is - try to boost enrollment. Have outreach days. Jazz up the introductory programming classes so the students are developing games instead of calculating Fibonacci sequences. etc.

    I'm in a different field, but some departments in my discipline are also facing threat of closure. Outreach and better intro classes are the responsibility of the department. If they try and fail, the university is going to close them, not tell them to grow. The decision to cut comes from the administration, not the department.

    The administration is looking to cut costs. They are going to cut whatever departments aren't thriving, not build up departments that aren't thriving and cut somebody else. When it gets to this point, the suggestions that you are offering are pointless. And there's no point in offering those suggestions to the people who made the cuts, because the department most assuredly did not cut its own major. Somebody above them did. The time for these things to happen was before the axe came down, and the place for them to happen was at the department level, not the university level.

    I know this sounds harsh, but I'm in a department that narrowly avoided the axe. We avoided it by growing, and that growth came from giving up on the culture of "What will the university do? Why don't they understand us?" and embracing the culture of "What can we do? How can we improve our own situation without asking for anything from the administration or expecting them to help us?" Once we embraced that culture, we grew very quickly.

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  8. I'm very familar with the situation as a relative of mine used to be a science professor at Gallaudet. Unfortunately, the typical students admitted to Gallaudet are way behind in math and science due to poor high school education. They simply don't have the skills to major in technical fields, and by college, it is too late to catch up. The lack of science majors of any type is really an indictment of extremely poor K-12 deaf education.

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  9. Of course my suggestions are pointless after the axe has been dropped. I was speaking generally. If one is in Department X, and enrollments keep declining year after year, then something needs to change in how the department operates, and probably also how the administration advertises the department to prospective students.

    I am not advocating a culture of whining about Those Mean Administrators, I am advocating a culture of proactive measures to attract and retain students. I am also advocating a culture of communicating to administrators and the community about the importance of Computer Science.

    In this particular case I am concerned because we, Computer Science, a field that is going to be the source of **60%** of all science and engineering job growth over the next 7 years got axed, but (no offense of fine arts) Studio Art and Art History survived. I can't imagine those majors are likely to lead to many job opportunities for graduates.

    Now, I suppose one could make an argument of the sort that attending university is solely about enriching The Life Of The Mind, and preparing people for jobs is madness, but I just don't believe that.

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  10. anon@10:25: Well, if that's the case then they shouldn't cut their education-related majors either. :-)

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  11. Gallaudet is a small liberal arts college. Deaf students who want a degree in CS seem much more likely to attend the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. This may explain the lack of demand for a major at Gallaudet.

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  12. Anon @ 9:34 AM,

    To take a bit of your argument out of context (and therefore place it back into the context of FCS's original post, which you left somewhat behind):

    "...I'm in a department that narrowly avoided the axe. We avoided it by growing..."

    It seems to me that you agree with her argument, in principle, that growing is a workable alternative to cutting.

    Now, your local department / administration conflicts aside, everybody in the decision-making process at Gallaudet probably feels that s/he is working to support the school's mission.

    At the point that this decision was made, the question was no longer "should the department or the administration be primarily responsible for the success/continued existence of the CS program," it was "is the CS program a better way of serving our students than reallocating resources to other programs."

    And if the decision-makers agreed with FCS, then the same people who chose to cut the CS program could just as well have chosen to support an aggressive program of growth, instead.*

    Since the decision has already been made, I guess you COULD argue that "...the suggestions that you are offering are pointless..." but not for the reasons you state. (And only if you want to be a bit of a jerk.)

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    *Unless, of course, Anon @ 10:25 is right, in which case it probably wouldn't work.

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  13. I'm anon @ 9:34.

    At the point that this decision was made, the question was no longer "should the department or the administration be primarily responsible for the success/continued existence of the CS program," it was "is the CS program a better way of serving our students than reallocating resources to other programs."

    Agreed. And if they base that on what they think of the potential that CS has as a subject, then perhaps the administration should indeed decide that the best use of resources is to improve the CS program. If, however, they base the decision on track records, on the demonstrated interest (or lack thereof) by their student body and demonstrated recruitment accomplishments (or lack thereof) by the faculty, then small majors are going to go. It won't matter how much potential one might insist there is, it will only matter that there aren't many students majoring in it.

    What I'm saying is that it's a losing argument to tell an administrator "This subject is important and there are things that could be done to grow the major." Their natural response will be "So, you've been around for all this time, and why didn't you ever do those things?" The only winning argument is to actually do those things and show the results.

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  14. The only way for Dr Obeidat to keep his damned job! HE SHOULD BE OUT!

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